


The Art Of Scraping Through

by QuinnyBee



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen, my headcanons let me show you them, sorta-kinda hurt/comfort if you squint, spoilers for The Eleventh Hour onward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-16 16:50:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12346695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuinnyBee/pseuds/QuinnyBee
Summary: Set during the epilogue of episode 49; Kravitz shows up unannounced and Taako expresses some complicated emotions via lighting things on fire. **General spoilers for The Eleventh Hour onward**





	The Art Of Scraping Through

As soon as he heard the lock clack open, Kravitz pulled him up to his full sitting height and tried to look intimidating rather than bored. He'd arrived on the base about the same time his three former bounties had and had positioned himself on their sitting room sofa to be ready for them. In no hurry to acquiesce as per usual, not one of them had bothered to show up for almost a full hour afterwards. Kravitz faintly hoped it would be Magnus outside the door; the fighter was short-spoken and rational when he wasn't being purposefully obtuse. He wouldn't have protested trying to get answers out of Merle either, though the bad blood over the whole crystalized arm fiasco was obviously going to be a roadblock. As the figure in the hall hip-checked the door open and sidled though, however, Kravitz had to suppress a grimace at his luck.

 

It wasn't that he didn't like Taako per se. In their brief but impactful acquaintanceship Kravitz had gotten the impression that Taako was deceptively powerful and far more shrewd than his aloof vanity and foul mouth would have suggested. That shrewdness, however, manifested more often than not as a chattery flood of insults and nonsense capped off by a snarky one-liner and a heinously clever use of a spell slot. Kravitz couldn't afford to be snooty about his choice in informants in his line of work, but this whole affair with the town of Refuge was frustrating enough without adding “can't get a word in edgewise” to the pile. Kravitz sighed and straightened his jacket cuffs.

 

Taako either hadn't seen Kravitz as he entered or was ignoring him on purpose. He tossed what looked like a rat king of ten or twelve keychains all looped into a single key into the large bowl on a stand next to the door before shucking off his cloak. “Someday you'll be useful, old friend,” Taako murmured, grinning a little to himself and patting the cloak affectionately. Kravitz cocked an eyebrow, jotting that down on his mental list of questions after all of the more important ones.

 

Taako's grin faded as he pulled his long braid of hair over his shoulder and inspected it. It looked to Kravitz like a few inches had been scorched off, leaving behind charred frizzy ends. “Oh fuck me,” Taako grumbled. “Guess I'm going ombre after all. God _dammit_.” He untangled the braid and shook his hair loose, letting what sounded like a desert's worth of sand hiss to the floor as he did, then took the bottom two thirds in his hands. Working slowly down to the ends, Taako rubbed his hands back and forth over his hair as if he was trying to rub it dry. In his hands' wake his hair turned a rich black-brown that covered up the burned ends rather fetchingly. Taako inspected his handiwork in the mirror next to the cloak rack and only then noticed Kravitz in the reflection.

 

“Oh.” Taako turned to face him, seeming genuinely taken aback by Kravitz's presence. Kravitz stood, putting his hands in his pockets.

 

“Well, we need to talk, don't we?” Kravitz said. “Because you boys...you've added quite a bit to your death count, haven't you?” He could feel the accent slipping already and quietly cursed himself for being stupid enough to pick that one for these three. Sure it sounded cool and gave him an air of rough-hewn mystery, but his voice was going to be completely shot by tomorrow. The corner of Taako's mouth curved up in a crooked grin that was both sardonic and a little sheepish.

 

“That one's on me,” Taako agreed. He paused, hand tightening on the strap of the bag slung over his shoulder. “Okay, ah. Can you. You can keep talking or whatever, I just need to do a thing...with a thing. Over here.” His sudden nervous vagueness made Kravitz wonder if Taako was planning to make a break for it back out the door. Instead Taako crossed the living area towards the small kitchen. Kravitz frowned but followed.

 

Taako set his bag down on the counter and dug around in its contents for a moment, coming up with a large sheaf of letters. He untied the stack and flicked through them once before tapping them even on the countertop. No two of the envelopes seemed to be the same, some made of fine stationary with opalescent wax seals while others were just flattened rolls of raw reed paper. All were addressed identically, however: a single name, Sazed, in scrabbly handwriting across the front.

 

Without looking up from the stack Taako reached over and snapped his fingers at one of the stove's burners. The electric coil flared into a spiral of blue-white fire the way electric coils generally shouldn't but the fact didn't seem to worry Taako too much. He took the top envelope from the stack and turned to the flame. His jaw was set hard and he had a cold, determined look in his eyes despite the way his fingers were trembling as he lowered the letter into the fire. When the letter burned too close to his fingers, Taako dropped the remaining inch or so onto the burner and reached over for the next one on the stack. Kravitz watched him in bewildered silence as one by one Taako reduced each of the two dozen or so letters to ashes with methodical precision. Once or twice he caught Taako glancing at him out of the corner of his eye as if prompting Kravitz to get on with whatever he was there for. Kravitz already felt too much like he'd interrupted something he wasn't meant to be part of; any further breaking of the silence was a blasphemy he couldn't bring himself to commit.

 

When all the letters had burned, Taako reached over for the cord that had held the bundle. He moved to dump this into the fire as well, but hesitated as he looked down at it in his palm. It was a thin braid of leather with a small tooled animal figure as the clasp, Kravitz saw, the kind of trickety thing you could get for a gold or two at a midsummer festival booth. The clasp appeared to be a long stylized cat or maybe some kind of weasel. Taako's fist tightened around it, but instead of burning it he shoved it deep back into his bag and shut the flap. The stove blinked back into cold dormancy with another flick of Taako's hand, all ash vanishing away with the flames. Taako took a deep, hard breath and sighed it out; it was the kind of sigh that was full of relief but still thick with suppressed tears. One hand raked through Taako's newly-ombre'd hair as the other grabbed his bag and slung it back over his shoulder. Taako drew up short in his retreat as he re-realized Kravitz was still standing there in the doorway.

 

“Right,” Taako said, pointing at Kravitz in the “ _that's_ what I forgot” way usually reserved for misplaced house keys. “You. What did you want again?”

 

“R-Refuge,” Kravitz stammered, too taken back by the sudden redirection of Taako's mood to be eloquent.

 

Taako snapped his fingers and pointed at him again, nodding. “ _Ri-ight_ . Rightrightright. That. Well, uh. Heh.” He flashed Kravitz a grin that was all sardonic amusement and jerked his thumb back toward the living area. He sauntered past and sprawled out into an armchair, all reserved quietude sublimating into smirking languid arrogance. “You'll wanna pop a squat for this one, skullkid,” Taako said, lazily waving a hand towards the sofa. “It's gonna get whack as hell before it gets any better.”

 


End file.
